


Tell me What you See (Besides the marks on my wrists)

by thefrenchmistake



Category: Victorious (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, References to Depression, Self-Harm, Self-Mutilation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:27:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22884757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefrenchmistake/pseuds/thefrenchmistake
Summary: She has color in her hair and heavy mascara on her eyelids so people won’t look past the shades of confidence or the disdain in her walk and see the hollowness inside.He has slashed wrists and multiple bracelets hiding them, teeth buried in his lower lip, and people look but can’t see because he turns on the million watts smile and batts his eyelids and noting else matters.
Relationships: Beck Oliver & Jade West, Beck Oliver/Jade West
Kudos: 102





	Tell me What you See (Besides the marks on my wrists)

**Author's Note:**

> A little one-shot of my favorite characters of this show, and kinda my favorite couple ever.  
> Trigger warnings ahead for self-harm and depression !  
> Enjoy.

She has color in her hair and heavy mascara on her eyelids so people won’t look past the shades of confidence or the disdain in her walk and see the hollowness inside. 

He has slashed wrists and multiple bracelets hiding them, teeth buried in his lower lip, and people look but can’t see because he turns on the million watts smile and batts his eyelids and noting else matters. 

She has a strand of pink standing out, and sometimes in history class he finds himself wanting to twirl it, wanting to tug at it, wanting to know why pink, out of all colors, wanting and wanting and never listening whatever is being said because suddenly she’s in his head and she won’t come out. 

He watches her once, drawn to the peculiar picture she makes walking through the colorful hallways of this school that welcomes damaged souls as long as they hide it.

He observes how she hides when she feels good because it’s the only way people won’t notice when she feels bad, when she feels like the walls are closing in and the world isn’t large enough for the pain in her chest and the anger weighing down on her lungs.

He observes her feet stuck in combat boots, the piercings in her nose and in her eyebrow, and he finds himself smiling (it’s honest, not cracking the corners of his mouth and drawing blood like other times) when her heavy blue eyes find his. 

  
She snaps the door of her locker shut and sends him a dirty, dangerous look that makes him want to play with her hair and lay his head on her thighs to sleep (he is so tired, nowadays, so tired). 

“What ?” She barks out, hands on her hips. 

His smile grows wider. 

She doesn’t like it, this boy who looks at her like she hung the damn stars.   
She doesn’t hate it either.   
His eyes are too heavy to be anything but gentle, and she finds him soothing, with the way his quiet, hoarse voice breaks a little at the end of sentences.   
With the way the marks on his wrists creep up on the edge of her vision when the sleeve goes a little too high. She looks away. 

“I need a ride home,” she states, shoulder pressed against the cold metal (but she pierced her skin not to feel the cold anymore, so it doesn’t get to her) expecting.

He blinks at her, closing his locker, confused and amused all at once, lips twitching up. 

“What ?”

“You have a car, yeah ?” She asks with a raised eyebrow, although she knows he does and he knows she knows. 

He nods. 

  
“Yeah. Yeah,” he repeats, chuckling. “I have a car.”

  
“Good. I have classes until five. See you then.”

  
And she’s gone. 

  
The car ride is uneventful, which is the best they both could’ve hoped for, the best thing that happened to them in a while. They talk about nothing, about everything, and when the times comes for her to leave, she finds herself reluctant to close the door behind her.  
So she turns around, leans on the car window, stares at him. 

“What ?” He smiles. 

  
“For the record, I can see right through you.”

  
He raises an eyebrow and tilts his head, fingers drumming on the wheel. 

  
“Yeah ? What do you see ?” 

  
“What no one else does,” she shrugs, readjusting her bag on her shoulder. 

  
“You’re some sort of genius, uh ?” He dodges, throat closed up and lungs struggling. 

  
“You’re kind of damaged, uh ?”

  
“Takes one to know one.”

  
The almost laugh-but-not-quite that escapes her hooks him immediately, as does the gentle brush of her hair on his arm when she leans all the way inside the car (he doesn’t know how she does it) to plant a kiss on his cheek, to his tremendous surprise. 

  
“You should go,” she states, all the way outside again like nothing happened (but his cheek is warm and the smile on his face is too wide) “You need your beauty sleep.”

  
“Have a good night, Jade.”

  
She doesn’t answer, merely nods, so he starts the car and leaves slowly, eyes far too drawn to her slim frame waiting on the porch for someone driving. 

  
“You too,” he hears her call out when his car turns on the road. 

  
His lips are soft when she kisses him for the first time, having to stand on her tiptoe (it pisses her off so she grabs the collar of his stupid leather jacket and pulls him down), compliant and hungry all at once, and she’s glad.   
His lips are soft, but the skin on his wrists isn’t, and in the bed he put up himself in his trailer, she kisses each and every scar until he tangles his hand in her hair and pulls her up to taste the hazelnut coffee on her tongue.   
He’s soft and he’s sharp at the same time, and Jade falls in love with the complexity of him underneath the cool look and the douchy hair and the movie star smile.   
She falls in love so hard, it’s not even funny, and she breaks a little more each time a new red strand appears on his veins. 

  
She never asks him to stop. 

  
He’s grateful for that. 

She doesn’t like it, of course not; even he doesn’t like doing it.   
But she understands. She looks like the cliched girl who hides her uncertainty and pain under layers of make up and a bad attitude, and maybe part of that is true, but…

But he knows better than most that appearances are a whole load of horse-shit.

She is gentle and caring and surprisingly affectionate, and Beck falls in love so hard he almost forgets the marks under the bracelets. 

  
And soon, it’s easier. Instead of reaching for a razor blade, he’ll take a shirt she left behind with a smirk on her face and bury his nose in it; he’ll go for a coffee run to bring her back her favorite; he’ll go buy her new scissors without wanting to dig them in his arm (she never dares confess she has a whole bunch of scissors in her room already). 

  
It’s easier and it’s smoother and it’s the first time he’s felt like he was living since he was eleven years old, at the top of the swing set looking down at the world like it owed him everything. Each smile he gets from her is earned and each laugh is honest, and he doesn’t care about the world anymore, because it feels like this is all he’ll need, his own little, selfish, narrowed little world. People stare but he couldn’t care less, because what they have and what they are, with his arm around her shoulders and her smile hidden in his neck, is really good. 

“Will you tell me why you do it ?” She asked him once, curled up on the armchair in his room, facing him, steely voice and pink hair falling before her face. 

  
Her eyes were locked on his and he felt breathless for just a second, heart bursting with something warm and odd. He didn’t move from his position on the bed, simply contemplated the question for a second before answering truthfully: 

  
“I don’t know. It’s just a feeling.”

  
She nodded like that made any sense, and then her long limbs unfolded and she walked to him, laying on top of him up, chin digging in his chest when she looked up at his face. He remembers she felt cold when he felt too hot all the time, angry at the world until her fingers wrapped around his wrists. 

“Do you think you could stop ?”

  
He didn’t know, so he didn’t answer. 

  
He knows now, now that his wrists are clean of any marks and his smile doesn’t hurt anymore.

  
The smile isn’t the red carpet one, the actor one; it’s the one that splits his cheeks because it’s too wide, the one that makes his dimples show and his eyes narrow to the point where she can’t see his pupils anymore.   
It’s the one she prefers. 

  
He knows now that he can laugh honestly with his friends and go out and sleep soundlessly and not hasten home to razor blades. Now that she fights with him but still smiles like she didn’t mean to, now that she is loud and fearless and the most enrapturing thing he’s ever seen. 

  
He witnesses the chaos she reaps and enjoys the show, curling his hand in her hair and forgetting all about razor blades and sad eyes and smudged blood and a world that seemed too big for how little he felt. 

He doesn’t feel small anymore. 

  
He feels like enough. 


End file.
